Too late for lunch, too early for dinner

There's always a godam fly in the ointment, ain't there?

Been busy with the wood. Figure I'm good till well into February. It's a tedious ritual. The Stihl work is kinda fun, but the loading and unloading and splitting and stacking, holy cow, more than a few times I've thought, couldn't I get a Mexican to do this for four bucks an hour?

I see where Rick Perry has got the solution to the Mexicans-working-for-four-dollars-an-hour problem. Invade Mexico. No shit! Well, the logistics of it would be simpler than this bullshit in Afghanistan. After losing the last couple of rounds to the Muslim forces of evil maybe we'll have better luck with the forces of evil across the Rio Grande.

Speaking of borders, one of the candidates has mentioned building a fence along the Canada US border. Now there's a brain wave. Look at a map. How is this gonna work out? I suppose it'll be fairly simple in some spots, say between Manitoba and North Dakota. It'll stop the Hutterites from crossing back and forth willy-nilly for no good reason.

Other places, it might be a bit of an issue. Spent some time at a cottage on the Saint Clair River a few summers ago.  Me and junior took a paddle boat over to Marine City. Bought a big old jug of Crown Royal and pedalled back. Crown Royal. Made in Canada but half the price in Michigan. Go figure. Where are they  putting the fence? Anyway, you're not going to transport any terrorists on a paddle boat, but one of the neighbours had an interesting story.

He had a buddy in Grosse Point Shores with a boathouse and a 32 foot Trojan flybridge. For years and years buddy would take a little cruise every summer weekend, meandering up to Lake Saint Clair and on up the river. Then he'd pop into the neighbours place just in time for a BBQ. As it happened, the neighbour usually had visitors, sometimes from eastern Europe but usually Chinese, and what a coincidence, the visitors were keen on visiting the USA!

Happy to oblige, buddy would offer four or six or eight folks a passage back to Grosse Point. No pesky customs officials, no border guards, no passports required. I'm guessing a bit of coin changed hands, but hey, you don't take the bus for free either, do you? Good luck with the fence.

Thanksgiving is just around the corner. Canadian thanksgiving that is. You've got a few more corners to go if you live on the other side of that soon-to-be fence. Can't figure out why they have different dates. After all, the other high holidays, Christmas and Easter and Halloween, are the same on both sides of the line. I used to think Canada had it earlier because we have less to be thankful for, but these last few years, I've been reappraising that.

For Yankee thanksgiving I promised Auntie Adele I'd visit. She's still in her own house in Sandusky. Haven't seen her in a few years. Well into her nineties, and still got all the marbles rolling in the same direction. I want to quiz her about our distant cousins, the von Trapp family. Seems the good Captain wasn't actually born into the Austrian aristocracy; he boinked his way in. He was of humble Prussian peasant stock, like all the rest of us. Looked damn fine in a uniform. Some Countess treated him to a leg-spread, got knocked up, and the rest is history.

Auntie Adele took her brood to visit the famous cousins once, back in the sixties when the singing von Trapps were still sort of a big deal. Meant to call ahead but never got around to it. Didn't exactly get a warm welcome. Mexican housekeeper tells her they're too late for lunch and too early for dinner, and besides, the family is on a tour of Europe. Come back some other time.

Adele never did, but by God, maybe I should visit the famous cousins.